Review by Booklist Review
"I loved the suddenness of small poems," Collins writes, musing on his long fascination with this form which, unlike haiku, has no rules except the required brevity, preferably of the breathtaking kind. A former U.S. poet laureate whose collections, 12 in number, attain best-seller status, Collins excels in concision, bringing distilled levity, absurdity, tenderness, imagination, longing, ruefulness, and metaphysics to more than 125 short lyrics. Nature, love, curious juxtapositions, observations, questions, riffs, puns, and marveling are all at play in these funny, clever, poignant poems that range in setting and focus while sharing mischief and delight, irony and loss, contemplation and wisdom. Here, an entire lifetime of feelings, dreams, anguish, and improvisation is compressed into a half-dozen lines or less. The table of contents is the longest composition. Though quickly read, Collins' small but fully loaded poems ask to be reread; there's always more to discern. Here's the smallest of these small but potent poems (the titles are always crucial), "The Sociologist:" "I wandered lonely as a crowd." A "small" review would say: Not to be missed.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Amiable and gregarious, much-loved former U.S. Poet Laureate Collins takes a new tact in his latest collection, writing 125 short poems of a few lines each as he explores nature, poetry, mortality, absurdity, and love.
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